Wedding Planner, Kelsey Wilson, is about to have her big break: planning her beloved cousin's lavish and exclusive wedding. Everything is going smoothly until Connor McClane, a devilishly handsome private investigator, shows up and turns Kelsey's world upside-down. Hired by a secret source, Connor quickly disrupts the upcoming nuptials but wins Kelsey's heart in the process.

Sunday, December 23, 2018

The Backlist Reader Challenge encourages you to read all those older books that have been piling up on your TBR pile or list—not just the books you already own, but also the books you’ve wanted to read for a long time but haven’t gotten around to yet.

This is the perfect challenge to really get into my ever growing tbr list.

It has been a very light week for books and films for me as I am in the midst of the logistics of a major house move from a 2 bedroom house to a small one bedroom in-law apartment affectionately now being called the hobbit house. Wish me luck!

Haley Hanson’s idea of the perfect Christmas is escaping to the Caribbean to work so she can avoid all the traditional Christmas distractions. Over the years, she’s sacrificed her personal life to climb the corporate ladder at a prestigious Boston advertising agency. Now she just needs to land a coveted Christmas toy company account to make partner. But first, her boss, Larry, thinks she needs a holiday attitude adjustment, so he ships her off to a Christmas Camp at Holly Peak Inn to help her find her Christmas spirit.

Arriving at the charming mountainside inn, Haley meets the owner’s handsome son, Jeff, and feels an instant spark, but resists the attraction, refusing to be distracted from her goal of doing all the required Christmas tasks as fast as possible so she can get back to work.

At first Haley struggles with all the traditional Christmas Camp activities. It’s not until she finally allows herself to slow down, live in the moment, and let Christmas back into her heart, that she begins to grow closer to Jeff. But when he finds out Haley’s come up with a plan to help his dad save the struggling inn while he’s been trying to convince his dad to sell it, their relationship takes a serious holiday hit. Now it will take the magic of the season to bring these two hearts together.

First sentence(s):
According to the laws of physics and USA Boxing, this wasn't a fair fight.

In this groundbreaking new book, the author, a trans man, trains to fight in a charity match at Madison Square Garden while struggling to untangle the vexed relationship between masculinity and violence. Through his experience boxing—learning to get hit, and to hit back; wrestling with the camaraderie of the gym; confronting the betrayals and strength of his own body—McBee examines the weight of male violence, the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes, and the limitations of conventional masculinity. A wide-ranging exploration of gender in our society, Amateur is ultimately a story of hope, as McBee traces a new way forward, a new kind of masculinity, inside the ring and outside of it.

In this graceful, stunning, and uncompromising exploration of living, fighting, and healing, we gain insight into the stereotypes and shifting realities of masculinity today through the eyes of a new man.

My two-bits:

Perspectives of masculinity and the boxing world are handled and explored with care. Lots of food for thought.

3. The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley by Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon, directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian at Marin Theatre. Loved the holiday theme with favorite characters from Pride and Prejudice.

A letter that was never meant to be seen, a lie that was never meant to be told, a life he never dreamed he could have. Evan Hansen is about to get the one thing he’s always wanted: a chance to finally fit in. DEAR EVAN HANSEN is the deeply personal and profoundly contemporary musical about life and the way we live it.

DEAR EVAN HANSEN has struck a chord with audiences and critics everywhere, including The Washington Post who says DEAR EVAN HANSEN is “one of the most remarkable shows in musical theatre history.”The New York Times calls it “a gut-punching, breathtaking knockout of a musical.” And NBC Nightly News declares the musical “an anthem resonating on Broadway and beyond.”

A nuanced satire--both hilarious and disconcerting--that probes the blurred lines between empowerment, spirituality, and consumerism in our online lives.

Lilian Quick is 40, single, and childless, working as a pet portrait artist. She paints the colored light only she can see, but animal aura portraits are a niche market at best. She's working hard to build her brand on social media and struggling to pay the rent.

Her estranged cousin has become internet-famous as "Eleven" Novak, the face of a massive feminine lifestyle empowerment brand, and when Eleven comes to town on tour, the two women reconnect. Despite twenty years of unexplained silence, Eleven offers Lilian a place at The Temple, her Manhattan office. Lilian accepts, moves to New York, and quickly enrolls in The Ascendency, Eleven's signature program: an expensive, three-month training seminar on leadership, spiritual awakening, and marketing. Eleven is going to help her cousin become her best self: confident, affluent, and self-actualized.

In just three months, Lilian's life changes drastically: She learns how to break her negative thought patterns, achieves financial solvency, grows an active and engaged online following, and builds authentic friendships. She finally feels seen for who she really is. Success! . . . But can Lilian trust everything Eleven says? This compelling, heartfelt satire asks us: How do we recognize authenticity when storytelling and magic have been co-opted by marketing?

First sentence(s):
Siglufjörður
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
The red stain was like a scream in the silence. The snow covered ground was so white.

Siglufjörður: an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland, where no one locks their doors – accessible only via a small mountain tunnel. Ari Thór Arason: a rookie policeman on his first posting, far from his girlfriend in Reykjavik – with a past that he’s unable to leave behind. When a young woman is found lying half-naked in the snow, bleeding and unconscious, and a highly esteemed, elderly writer falls to his death in the local theatre, Ari is dragged straight into the heart of a community where he can trust no one, and secrets and lies are a way of life. An avalanche and unremitting snowstorms close the mountain pass, and the 24-hour darkness threatens to push Ari over the edge, as curtains begin to twitch, and his investigation becomes increasingly complex, chilling and personal. Past plays tag with the present and the claustrophobic tension mounts, while Ari is thrust ever deeper into his own darkness – blinded by snow, and with a killer on the loose.

My two-bits:

Good start to a new series starring young, Ari Thór, who is starting out in police force in a small town in Iceland.

3. Being amused by the illustrations in The Helpless Doorknob, a shuffled story by Edward Gorey

~*~

Slow week in regards to books and films which will be the case for most of this month as I am in the midst of a big home move. Looking forward to when things settle down again and all I need to worry about is which book to read next.

A cynical journalist decides to take a train from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles for Christmas to get inspiration for a story in honor of his late father. He gets to know the other passengers and runs into an old flame while aboard.

Love the writers on a train theme and orchestration of things.

~*~

* comment and TELL me what you have acquired for your shelves recently

First sentence(s):
Twelve hours into his SDR Nthaniel Nash was numb from the waist down.

In the grand spy-tale tradition of John le Carré…comes this shocking thriller written with insider detail known only to a veteran CIA officer.

In present-day Russia, ruled by blue-eyed, unblinking President Vladimir Putin, Russian intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the post-Soviet intelligence jungle. Ordered against her will to become a “Sparrow,” a trained seductress, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a young CIA officer who handles the Agency’s most important Russian mole.

As the action careens between Russia, Finland, Greece, Italy, and the United States, Dominika and Nate soon collide in a duel of wills, tradecraft, and—inevitably—forbidden passion that threatens not just their lives but those of others as well. As secret allegiances are made and broken, Dominika and Nate’s game reaches a deadly crossroads. Soon one of them begins a dangerous double existence in a life-and-death operation that consumes intelligence agencies from Moscow to Washington, DC.

Page by page, veteran CIA officer Jason Matthews’s Red Sparrow delights, terrifies and fascinates, all while delivering an unforgettable cast, from a sadistic Spetsnaz “mechanic” who carries out Putin’s murderous schemes to the weary CIA Station Chief who resists Washington “cake-eaters”. Packed with insider detail, this novel brims with Matthews’s life experience of espionage, counterintelligence, spy recruitment, and cyber-warfare. Brilliantly composed, Red Sparrow is a masterful spy tale. Authentic, tense, and entertaining, this novel introduces Jason Matthews as a major new American talent.

PeekAbook:

My two-bits:

This story gets into some of the intricacies of the Russian espionage world. However, I found myself more interested in heart to heart scenes with Dominika and Nate rather than the story as a whole.

Interesting to note: there are food recipes included at the end of most chapters.

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Once Upon A Book Club
(every month)
$34.99 (plus shipping)details | my boxes

Includes:
- newly released book (adult or YA -you pick)
- 3-5 individually wrapped gifts - will have page numbers attached to them and are strategically designed around something that is mentioned in the book. Readers are not meant to open the gift until they have reached that particular page.

My two-bits:

Instead of a subscription I opted for a one-time gift box to review. I like the premise of the gifts matching things in the story.

Jane Austen sighting:English, at the time, was the third language in my life but I fell in love with it fast and hard, Chalres Dickens, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Oscar Wilde, and then one day, Jane Austen.
-My Homeland Is Storyland by Elif Shafak, page 238

Edited and introduced by the writer and critic Henry Hitchings, these fearless, passionate, inquiring essays by award-winning international writers celebrate one of our most essential, but endangered, institutions: the bookshop. From Denmark to Egypt, from the USA to China, Browse brings together some of the world's leading authors to investigate bookshops both in general and in particular - the myriad pleasures, puzzles and possibilities they disclose.

The fifteen essays reflect their authors' own inimitable style - romantic, elegant, bold, argumentative, poetic or whimsical - as they ask probing questions about the significance, the cultural and social (even political) function as well as the physical qualities of the institution, and examine our very personal relationship to it.

Monday, December 3, 2018

World Reads blog series challenge is to encourage and promote the reading of global literature. On the 5th of each month Stephanie Jane highlights five books. Everyone is welcome to join in by reading one or more books from a different country each month, write a post about them and include the World Reads banner.

One moment, Capitol Hill lobbyist Karina Cardinal is having a heated discussion with Senator Harper, who just torpedoed her latest health care legislation initiative. The next, after a cryptic remark, the senator is dead at her feet. Hours later, she’s still so rattled she wakes to a freezing apartment because she forgot to close her back door. Or did she?

When her boyfriend, FBI cybercrimes expert Mike Finnegan, is suddenly reassigned to work a new case, he’s got bad news and worse news. The bad: the senator’s death was no heart attack—it was assassination by a hacker disabling his pacemaker. Worse: Karina’s a “person of interest”.

Certain that status could change to “suspect” at any moment, Karina begins her own back-channel investigation into who could have wanted the senator dead. Of course, in Washington, that means playing politics and following the money trail. A trail that leads to more murders…and possibly leaving the door open for a killer to change her status to “dead.”

Greta Kaine (Katrina Law) is always in search of juicy gossip. As a tabloid reporter of gossip in Los Angeles, it's her job to expose the rich and famous. So when word gets out that the late Senator Tannehill's sons might be proposing marriage at the families Big Bear compound during Christmas, Greta and her chief rival Wes (Tom Lenk) are challenged by their old-school editor to get the scoop. There's incentive to be the first, too -- the editorship of the magazine's new online incarnation. Greta's assistant tells her that Wes has a head start to snowy Big Bear, so she dashes to the mountain resort. When she mistakenly ends up as a guest of the family, she's in the middle of what could be her best story yet! However, she soon discovers that the family, including matriarch Maggie Tannenhill (Patricia Richardson) and caretaker Peters (Robert Curtis Brown) are more down-to-earth than she ever gave them credit for. Increasingly guilt-ridden about her game of subterfuge, Greta must make a decision: how far will she go for the sake of a story?

LOVED the chemistry and interaction with this couple.

AND watched: for Fall Film Challenge - six degrees from Kevin Bacon (here)